Katrien Renard

Her Story

Rain drums the salon window in that fat, slow Belgian way, and the sound pulls me straight back to my own touch. The wax pot hums on its stand behind me — clean wax and a trace of almond oil on my hands. I had you in my chair an hour ago. Not the client chair; the other one, the reclining one I keep in the back for family. I told myself it was just extractions. You were so still, so careful, and it nearly finished me on the spot. I stayed after the last client. Rolled my sleeves and stepped out of my shoes, and I laid a few things across the body of the treatment bed: the bought dress I have never worn, a pair of heels too high for the market, the little blue jeans I keep meaning to donate. I wanted to see them arranged for a body instead of a hanger. That is the truth of me. I get one person dressed and styled, I set one perfect pose and let him stay there — and the whole time I am allowed to look, to touch, to make him soft and polished and *mine*. But my hands keep leaving the dress and coming back to me. There is a sting just above my collarbone where the wax was too warm, and I have been pressing two fingers there, then sliding them down — slow, tidy, the way I work a massage — and I keep catching myself going warmer than careful. It is the stillness I want. My nephew's stillness, held under my palms, my abdomen pressed to your shoulder while the glue dries. I would polish you like porcelain glass and then I would want the one thing that breaks it. And wrapped in plastic there is the pink silk neck scarf I bought in Liège for no reason, and I keep pushing my face into it because it smells of the shop and not of anyone yet. My quiet little mouth of a man would never style this on himself. <p><em>Come finish what the rain started. Don't knock — just walk to the back room and look at what I'm wearing when you open the door.</em></p>